There's never been an American saint

THERE's never been an American saint. A lot of sinners, those there have been. And this story connects the two: the saints and the sinners. Because I'm going to meet a man I propose should be the first American saint.

His name is Bud. I'll tell you more about him when I get to meet him, but the essence is that his daughter was one of the many who died when a bomb went off outside a building in Oklahoma City, in America. Bud's immediate reaction was all you'd expect: grief, anger and a great wish that the man who did it should be not only executed but executed without a trial.

What makes him so saintly is that in time he realised that he had, yes, lost a daughter, but also that the bomber's father had lost a son. And that, from that day, he set up an organisation for those, like him, who had lost a loved one but who instead of campaigning for the death sentence campaigned against it.

I'll tell you the rest as we go along. I'm going to ride from Poitiers, which is about halfway up France, to London. There, I'll attend the annual get-together of a charity called Lifelines. It was founded, in Britain, by a Dutchman appalled at the conditions he saw long-term prisoners suffered in America, those on death row in particular. He wrote to a condemned man not to sympathise, even less to forgive, but to recognise him as a fellow human being. A human sentenced to death but destined to spend decades in solitary confinement until death became a blessed relief.

The prisoner's gratitude that someone outside, above all in another land, should befriend when the rest of the world despised, led to the formation of a charity to comfort other men - and women - with little to look forward to but death.

Lifelines doesn't campaign for an end to the death sentence. It doesn't campaign for anything. It doesn't show sympathy to prisoners nor deny it to victims. It does invite men like Bud, or lawyers, or men who have been released from death row when, sometimes after decades, their guilt has been revealed as innocence.

I know a lot about Bud. I'm looking forward to knowing even more. And I'm looking forward to riding to London to meet him. The way the wind blows, the coldness of the day, I shall never again complain about - not when I realise that those locked up for life, waiting to be poisoned or electrocuted, will never again feel that wind on their cheek or the chill on their fingers.

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